


The Universe Is Shaped Exactly Like The Earth

by pearl_o



Category: due South
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-24
Updated: 2006-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 19:19:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearl_o/pseuds/pearl_o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you go straight long enough, you end up where you were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Universe Is Shaped Exactly Like The Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my second anniversary in due South fandom -- beta and inspiration provided by Brooklinegirl.

The day's shit from the beginning, straight for the garbage bin, skip right over it, except it turns out that's not how it works. Instead, you have to live through every single stupid second of it, on and on and on, because it _never_ ends and there's no shortcut.

Ray yells at Frannie. He yells at Dewey. He yells at Huey. He yells at Dief. He yells at Fraser. He yells at the guy they're arresting and comes pretty damn close to doing a lot more than that to the asshole, so that Fraser has to grab him and drag him away before he can punch the guy in the face, and start brutalizing him right there in the middle of the police station.

He breaks free of Fraser, twisting away, glaring at everybody in the room -- they're all staring at him like he's gone wacko, like he's a mad dog, like they don't know what he's gonna do next. He stands like that for a moment before letting out a ragged breath and turning around to walk down the hall.

Ray can hear Welsh telling Fraser to go after him, make sure he's okay, keep an eye on him, so it's not surprising when Fraser follows him into the john.

He splashes his face with cold water in the sink while Fraser watches him.

"Ray," says Fraser.

Ray snaps back, "What?"

"Is there something wrong?"

Ray looks up to the mirror, where Fraser's watching him, all grave and concerned-like. "Nothing's wrong, Fraser." Fraser doesn't look convinced, so Ray sighs annoyedly and adds, "Look, it's just -- it's my anniversary, all right? No big deal."

And, whoosh, just like that, there it goes, Fraser's face goes totally blank the way it always does, every single time Ray talks about his marriage. Caring and compassionate and no sign of what he's really thinking at all. "Ah," he says.

"I'm serious, Fraser," Ray says. "Don't make a big deal out of this."

"No," Fraser says, and his voice sounds kind of far away, "of course not."

* * *

The first time Ray asked Stella to marry him was the summer after she graduated high school. Ray had been out for a year, himself, long enough to stumble through a painful semester of community college before giving up and getting a job.

They were in the backseat of Ray's car, and Stella couldn't stop crying and crying and crying, and Ray was holding her tight against his chest and stroking her hair. They could live with his parents; his mom and dad loved Stella, they'd love the baby, it'd be cheap and they could save up their money until Ray got a better job and they could afford their own place, it would all work out--

"Ray, what are you _talking_ about?" Stella had said, finally, her voice sounding anguished and almost choked. "We can't -- we can't have this baby."

"No, no, Stella, sure we can--"

"Ray, I'm eighteen years old! I'm starting college in a month! I'm not ready for this. _You're_ not ready for this."

"I'm plenty ready," said Ray, "I'm totally ready," but Stella just shook her head.

He held her hand in the waiting room at the clinic three weeks later, and it was like everything happened in slow motion: first him and Stella and their baby growing inside her, the three of them all together, a _family_ \-- and then they called Stella's name and she walked through that door, and Ray was all alone, and then even when she came back out, it was different, it was her and it was him, but they were completely separate again, not a family at all.

He took Stella back to her house. Her parents were gone for the weekend, but he made her a bed on the couch and brought her painkillers and soup and tissues and whatever she needed, and he only cried himself when he was alone in the shower.

The next time he asked her to marry him was three and a half years later, right after Christmas, and that time she said yes. They got married in June, two weeks after she graduated from college. It was outside, and Stella wore her hair down and a circle of flowers on top of her head, and it was most beautiful Ray had ever seen her.

They went to an inn in New England for their honeymoon, a present from Stella's folks, and then they came back to Chicago and moved into their own place and Ray went back to work as a cop and Stella started law school.

For a couple of years they were really, really happy, and for a couple more years after that was still good, and a couple of years after that it wasn't anymore, but it was still better than being apart, or at least Ray thought so, but Stella didn't agree, after all, and then it was over. Twenty-five years of loving somebody, turned off like that. Except it didn't work that way.

Ray went over every moment of his marriage in detail, wondering: what if he had done this different? What if he had said that instead of this? What if Stella had agreed to this instead? Over and over in his head, every way they could have made it work, avoided that wrong turn had left it all like this.

He wondered what would have happened if Stella had said yes that first time. Because then -- then, Ray thought, it wouldn't have just been the two of them, separate in their own little worlds, like Stella was so far away from him Ray could barely even reach her anymore. It would never have been like that, because it would be them together, them and the baby, like a _family_, forever.

Sometimes Ray would see kids on the street and in his head he'd compare them to how old their kid would have been if they'd had it. Three, seven, ten, sixteen: that's what his daughter, his son, would have looked like. He didn't know if Stella ever did the same thing. Even after twenty years, he had never figured out how to ask her.

* * *

Or maybe that was all crap. Maybe none of that was true at all. Maybe, Ray thought, maybe this was the way it was going to turn out, no matter what. Maybe there was nothing he could have done to make it work, no right thing he could have said, no right move he could have made. Maybe it was never good to begin with, and he had just been fooling himself, remembering it all differently, pretending it was great and amazing and perfect when it never really was at all. Maybe Stella had known all along.

He could go back in time now, knowing everything he did, go right back to the beginning, do everything _right_ this time, and maybe it would still end up just the same. Maybe it didn't matter what they did, anybody at all. This was just the way the world worked.

Maybe the whole universe was just playing up to this point, him sitting here like a loser on his couch, the wrong side of thirty, alone and pathetic and nameless with nothing but a beer and a Mountie to keep him company.

"Fraser," Ray says, down from the very bottom wells of his self-pity, "do you believe in fate?"

The question comes kind of from nowhere -- they'd been sitting silently watching the basketball game for ten minutes, and there was nothing about fate going on there -- but Fraser doesn't even look surprised, or like it's a weird question at all.

"Certainly, Ray," Fraser says.

Ray nods, a little, takes another swig of his beer and rests his head back against the back of the couch.

He feels Fraser shifting on the cushion, moving around a little, and then Fraser's hand is warm on his bare forearm. "But I believe in a destiny that we shape ourselves. It comes from our own choices, and decisions. We can change it."

Ray blinks up at the ceiling for a moment, going over that in his head a couple times. "Uh, Fraser, I don't think that's what destiny _means_."

"It's what it means to me, Ray," says Fraser, and he sounds pretty certain, and Ray isn't sure what he thinks about it.

They're both quiet for a couple seconds, and then Fraser takes his hand off Ray's arm and says in a real low voice, "One of the great tragedies of this life, I think, is that we so rarely have the opportunity for a second chance. And seeking the second chance -- more often than not, it just makes things worse..."

Ray raises his head again and looks at him; Fraser's looking down at his own hands, frowning a little.

And then he looks back up, looks straight at Ray, and there's just a hint of a smile on his face. He says, "But then, on the other hand, one of the great kindnesses of life must be the fact that we get so many _new_ opportunities, so many new chances to explore. Don't you think so?"

Fraser's eyes are wide, sincere, guileless. Maybe even a little hopeful.

"Yeah," Ray says slowly, still watching him. "Yeah, I guess so."

Fraser smiles a little more, and nods at him, before he turns back to the game; Ray watches him for another moment before he does the same thing.

It's not like anything Fraser said was really helpful or useful (because it's not, really, not at all) but Ray feels better, anyway. Like something's different. Like even if the day started off as the fucking pits, maybe it's not so bad. Maybe all alone with a beer and a Mountie -- not to mention the wolf on the fire escape -- isn't so bad.

It's going to be another four months before Ray kisses Fraser for the first time, and another two months after that before he realizes that that's it, that's _love_, but once he figures it out he's gonna know this is where it started, right here, like this, this moment, counting forward.


End file.
